


Clipped Wings Can Still Soar

by HashtagPomegranate



Series: Soulmates Make It Work [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 02:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14178627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HashtagPomegranate/pseuds/HashtagPomegranate
Summary: Before the Chitauri Invasion, before Captain America was defrosted, before Tony Stark was kidnapped in Afghanistan, Pepper Potts met her soulmate at a charity gala.  It didn't go the way the stories about soulmates meeting always did.





	Clipped Wings Can Still Soar

**Author's Note:**

> There is mention of an off-screen character death.

It happened at one of the many charity galas that Stark Industries funded and hosted. Pepper had been working on this one for months. Normally she passed off most of the prep work to the teams of people in Stark Industry who dealt with the charities. This time, however, Tony Stark had a personal connection. Knowing Rhodey, and wanting Rhodey to have a safety network (outside of Tony, not that it would be needed), meant that Tony didn't complain about something taking up so much of Pepper's time. In fact, he had requested her attention on the matter. So she had pushed up her proverbial sleeves, chosen her team, and started to do research. While Tony had had the final say in each of the five charities they were fundraising for, she was the one who had reached out to make contact, to talk to the press, and curate a guest list. 

After all of the work she had put in, on top of her normal duties, it was her time to shine. And she was going to. She wore a stunning high-necked, deep violet gown, one of the many that Tony had “bought” for her on the many occasions that required gift-giving. She was particularly fond the way this particular dress tastefully draped to show off her, probably too expensive, shoes. Pepper was not exactly a short woman, and the shoes added a few inches that allowed her to powerfully not have to look up at the many people she interacted with, a thing she had learned could turn a negotiation from useless to successful.

It was the kind of event that required a healthy amount of social butterflying around the room. In most cases at a gala, she would meet the organizers; people whose names she would be intimately familiar with never having seen a face and sometimes never having heard their voice. Even with all of the work she had put into the gala, there were still so many people she hadn't met. So, not that far off from a normal night at a gala. 

Their first meeting wouldn’t have been all that memorable (“It’s nice to finally meet you Miss. Potts, I can’t tell you how much an event like this means to me.” “Sam Wilson, your name has come up so often in conversation I feel like I already know you.”) Except for the itching that Pepper felt on her hand. She absent-mindedly scratched along her thumb, running up through the inside of her forearm. When it didn’t go away, she glanced down to see the words appearing in a choppy scrawl. 

She looked up at Sam to see his face was relatively blank. He shook his head and smiled, and what a smile it was. Pepper may have worked with Tony (who was quite a looker when he wanted to be) and the upper echelons of society that she dealt in often had a number of unrealistically beautiful people, but nothing could compare to that smile. “I’m a veteran myself, and work with them now. I can’t tell you how much of a difference it makes that you chose to work with us.” 

Fighting off a frown, Pepper calmly said, “We only work with the best, your Veterans group has shown marked results.” She found it hard to focus on his face, eyes flitting to see if she could see her words on him, the same way they had appeared on her. “Pardon my question, this could be very misguided, but…” She stopped, not because she didn’t have the words, but because his very expressive face was putting off very strong vibes. 

“Miss Potts, it’s been wonderful meeting with you, but I would hate to waste your time. Maybe we can talk later?”

Ah, that was right. They were in a crowded room. The ballroom the gala was being held in was sizable, but with the number of people who had paid through the nose to be there, there wasn’t much wiggle room. In fact, Pepper suddenly noticed the fairly loud conversations happening to both her left and right. She had always assumed she would handle this moment better, but there she was, failing at the start to her perfect tomorrow. “Of course, can I give you my card?”

“You carry business cards to a gala?” And finally there was a little more personality. His tone of voice both disbelieving and joking.

“What, you don’t?” She said with mock surprise, while searching her tiny wristlet. It should have been easy, but her nerves made her fumble once and then twice before holding out a card. “It’s my office number but I have it forwarded for my cell.” He took the card, glanced at it and slipped it into a pocked. “I,” she hesitated, it seemed like there was nothing right to say. “I’ll be waiting.” 

He gave her a small smile and gracefully bowed out as she was approached by someone else asking for her time. 

It may have been her night to shine, her night to show off what she had done, her night to live a little. But she found herself constantly searching the room trying to get one more glance of her soulmate. It didn’t seem normal for a soulmate to run from the match, that was never what showed up in the stories. So, it was an evening of distracted chatter. After a few hours, Pepper found one of the assistants who had helped her organize the whole thing to let them know she wasn’t feeling well and would be heading out.

She couldn’t tell if the dress had been wasted. Something as pretty as it was deserved more than three hours of being out on the town, she hadn’t even given it three hours. And with the circles she ran in, it wasn’t like she would be able to wear it again. Nobody would want to do such a ghastly thing, she heard float around in her mind. Yet again, her small town roots did not appreciate the big city ways. And yet, it was the dress she had met her match in. Even if the meeting hadn’t gone the way she had planned. It was hard to ask for a more exciting night than that.

And if she focused on her dress to help her forget the way her phone wasn’t ringing, so be it. 

 

Sam was pointedly not looking at his refrigerator. He would get up, go for his normal morning run, make coffee, and pointedly not look at the door of the refrigerator when he went to get the creamer. When fixing dinner he made sure to always open the door before moving his eyes to see where everything was located within. 

Because the door to the refrigerator is where he put one Miss Virginia Potts’ business card. The business card with her contact information on it. Which she had given him. It was given to him because at the point where they met, a beautiful, if slightly utilitarian cursive, had appeared, a familiar itch, though this time it was on his bicep. 

He had noticed her fidgeting, and saw his own scrawl appear just along the delicate length of her thumb and up towards her forearm. It was clearly a new experience for her, the awe on her face made it obvious. 

For him it wasn’t so new. 

On his back, between his shoulder blades… it was a familiar sensation. And one he wasn’t quite ready to face. So he avoided looking at his refrigerator door, and instead avoided it and everything to do with it. 

He had work. There was always enough work, too much work, really, for someone who wanted to work with Veterans. A few endless wars, one he had even participated in, left far too many people needing help for the amount of money allotted to them. Somehow there was always more room for increases in the military budget but as soon as a person was out of that armor the money wasn’t there. 

There was a full week of one-on-one meetings, and running group therapy, and meeting with his coworkers to come up with plans. A whole week of him telling people that they needed to continue with their lives. That the trauma of war was there, that it was real, but that it shouldn’t keep them from their future. A week of telling people that sometimes the scariest choice they had was to let the past be in the past, to make a new move. 

A week of him being a hypocrite. 

And there he was back in the kitchen. Pointedly not staring at the refrigerator. Pointedly not looking at that tiny piece of surprisingly firm cardboard. 

There was so much they were going to have to talk about. So much that he would be brining to the table, things that weren’t easy to bring to a table. 

He shook his head, “Gotta pull my head out of my ass.” 

Decision made, he walked over to the fridge, pulled the card off, put in on the counter and dialed the number. It started to ring and he felt his heart pick up in a way it hadn’t since he was in high school, hoping that his girlfriend of a week and a half would pick up the phone rather than her rather gruff father. It was the same vein of thought he was having now. Please, let it be the answering machine. It seemed like it would be easier to talk to a robot than to talk to the woman he had avoided calling for a full week, just like he would have as a teenager. 

“Hello, you’ve reached Virginia Potts.”

She had actually picked up. “Hello…” too formal, “Hi Miss Potts, it’s Sam Wilson. We met at the gala?”

He could hear the smile in her voice, could almost picture the way that she would be set up at a desk; perfect posture, incredibly organized, hair up to be out of her face… “Ah yes, Sam. I’m glad you called.” There was a pause. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. An awkward phone call a week after you matched. That’s not what any of the stories ever showed, that’s not like any story anyone ever told. 

“I was wondering.” She started at the same time he said, “I wanted to ask…”

Another awkward pause. “Why don’t you ask your question first?” She demurred.

“I wanted to ask if we could meet in person…”

“Yes, a phone call doesn’t really do the situation justice does it.” There was something about calling a soulmate matching a ‘situation’ that stung. But he couldn’t exactly argue. “My only problem is I had to head back up to New York shortly after the gala.”

He leaned against the countertop, crossing one foot over the other, left arm crossed over his body. Everything about him was screaming defensive, the only saving grace was that they were talking on a phone call and not in person. 

He heard tapping on a keyboard faintly coming through the phone. “My next trip to DC isn’t for… another two weeks. Unfortunately, I’m booked solid until then.”

Sam thought about his own schedule. He had no idea what Pepper’s was like but his was full of meetings and planning sessions. And then after finishing up the seemingly endless paperwork he could manage to snag a beer with his friends, maybe play some trivia, catch the game over the weekend. Would offering to head up to New York seem desperate? Was he willing to wait another two weeks to finally speak face to face?

That space between his shoulder-blades itched and he decided that two weeks was a fair time to wait. He had already waited a few days, a few more couldn’t hurt.

“I’d be happy to make a trip up, but right now…” he trailed off, not wanting to fill in the blanks. “Where are your meetings, maybe I can suggest a place to grab a coffee?”

“That would be lovely. Here, let me give you my cell phone now that we aren’t surround by people that I would prefer don’t have more access to my personal life.”

Sam chuckled, “What, Tony Starks’ friends getting you down?”

“Tony Stark getting me down.” She repeated in the same cadence before she rattled off a few numbers. “I have to run to a meeting, but,” there was a pause, “I tend to have this on me at all times.” It was a little bit rushed, rushed in a way that made Sam smile. Her nerves were showing. It was kind of nice to see after she had been so put together for the rest of the conversation. 

“Well, let me know if you need me to kick his ass. Dude might be an engineer, but I think I could take him.”

 

Pepper hadn’t expected to hear much from the man before their meeting. It wasn’t clear if the delay in him calling her was due to his unhappiness at the match, or if there was something else. Either way, it was fairly clear that his feelings on matching with her were complicated at best. Even if their talk had gone fairly well from her eyes.

Still, that first text lit up her phone, a strange number sadly too common. While she did what she could to protect the number, random people were always finding new ways to contact her. 

Luckily for both of them, his opening line was ‘This is Sam, figured you should have my number too.’ Simple and straightforward, Pepper smirked and saved the number.

‘Thanks for letting me know. It probably would have been hard to tell you when I’m able to meet without your number.’

‘You’re a resourceful woman, I believe you would have figured out a way to get to me.’

And that started it. For all of the tentativeness of their phone calls, their texting was much looser. Almost flirtatious, something that so many men seemed to have trouble with where she was concerned. So many people were either too intimidated or bypassed flirtation and went straight down to business. Neither way worked for her. Bit this, this was fun.

She found herself waiting and waiting for the trip to DC. A monthly trip she normally hated. There was nothing worse than a politician who wanted something, except maybe a lobbyist who had been a politician only months before. It was a trip that was full of people with egos too large assuming that she didn’t have the backbone to say no. They assumed that because Tony Stark had pushed the meeting off on her that she wasn’t the one who made decisions.

They were sorely mistaken; she had her backbone because of Tony Stark. And she made the decisions because he didn’t want to. He was still CEO but it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it. Pepper and Obadiah Stane made all of the decisions, Tony rarely had to step in. Instead the man got to invent to his hearts content and only occasionally have to deal with the Board.

Yet this time, Pepper was looking forward to it. Yes, she might be surrounded by sleazy politicians. But she was also going to have a chance to get to know her soulmate. Someone who had treated her with respect, and was clearly interested in her… 

Once she was in town, she texted Sam to let him know. Within minutes her phone lit up again suggesting a coffee place only a few blocks away from the building that held her multiple meetings. A quick response and then she had to get back to work. She wasn’t trying to keep her nerves from getting the better of her, that would be stupid. And childish. There was just a lot of work to do. 

 

The coffee shop that Sam had suggested was comfortable. One of the many indie coffee shops that littered DC for all of those people who decided they wanted something less commercial than a Starbucks. The weather was nice enough that, when he beat her there, he decided to stand outside to make it a little bit easier for her. He was leaning up against the brick exterior. Unlike most of the people around him, he didn’t have his headphones in, or his phone in his hand.

Everything about the situation felt strained. Meeting Ms. Potts… Pepper, he had to remind himself, he was… he was conflicted. They were soulmates of course, but how much did he feel like revealing during the first meeting, how could he know what she would be willing to handle right out of the gate? And the long distance? There was no way he was going to talk himself out of the meeting, he wasn’t chickenshit enough for that. But how was he supposed to deal with the pit in his stomach saying it was wrong for him to have a second set of words, words that were far more visible than his first set. 

He was lost enough that he almost didn’t notice her stopping in front of him. Almost. It was kind of hard to miss a woman of her caliber. Smart black dress, heels high enough to kill a man, and a hair pulled back to frame her face; she looked ready for a modern day battle.

“Meetings going well?”

“Oh god,” she rolled her eyes, “ I just finished talking for two hours about a possible tax on our tech.” 

“Makes you want to die a little inside? I know the feeling, occasionally they call me in to talk about our funding.” He commiserated. She gave him a grateful look and moved towards the door after he motioned for her to lead. “This place is amazing.” He promised, “the center is a few blocks that way but we send someone over here every day rather than stop at the Starbucks next to our building.” 

She breathed in. “It certainly smells like good coffee.” 

“Why don’t’ you grab a seat? What do you want?”

“Are you sure I shouldn’t be getting coffee?”

“I figured after traveling here, staying in a hotel, and dealing with politicians all day you deserved a bit of a treat?” He asked, waiting for her to disagree with his logic. Instead she smiled in a way that showed some wall in her mind had just fallen. 

“I can’t argue with that. Lattee? Something with a dark roast?”

“Sure.” He kept glancing at her as she chose something tucked into the back. It would make sense that a woman in her position might not want to sit in a window where she could attract attention. He didn’t like sitting in the windows for a slightly different reason. 

He picked up the coffees and placed her in front of her, sitting on the stool. “I think I have an advantage on you, considering your public profile. You want to start off?”

He could see her thinking for a moment. “You didn’t seem to be thrilled out getting my words, is there a reason?”

He choked on his coffee. After a moment of coughing he looked up and saw her face was stony. The face of someone who faced countless people and had to ask the hard questions and give the hard answers. “Wow, not starting off easy are we?” She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were assessing. “I, uh, you aren’t my first match.” He closed his eyes as his fists involuntarily closed. Because of that he missed the expression of sympathy that flashed across her face before being tucked away. There was no way he wanted pity. “They, uh, he, died a few years ago. I needed a lot of therapy to cope and was lucky enough that the VA could give it to me. It’s part of the reason I do what I do now.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I,”

He cut her off. “No, it’s a good thing to get it out of the way. We don’t have to talk about it anymore…”

“He was clearly important to you. Tell me about him?” 

His shoulders dropped. It was the first time someone other than a therapist had asked him to talk about Riley. His family hadn’t liked the implication that he wasn’t straight and had ignored the connection, god-fearing people that they were. And so he talked. 

They ended up talking for an hour and a half before Pepper’s phone beeped and she apologetically had to run out. It wasn’t at all what he had expected. It wasn’t light-hearted or awkward. They talked about his past with Riley and how his death affected every part of his life. They talked about Sam’s complicated feelings for a new connection. They talked about Pepper’s move from small-town girl to life in the big city. About how her current job, read: Tony Stark, was driving her crazy, the way that life around him always seemed crazy with no break in sight. They talked about the realities of a relationship between the two of them. 

They were both adults, people who had lived their lives the way they wanted to live their lives. There couldn’t be some big dramatic reveal where one of them quit their job to move across the country. There were too many people relying on them. 

But it was a start. They could spend some time together during Pepper’s monthly meetings in DC and figure out what was going to work for them. But if one thing was clear, it was that they could make it work. He sent a quick text before heading back to work. 'I'm looking forward knowing you.'


End file.
